Terminal devices which have found significant acceptance for use by consumers to enter information into computer systems are the self-service terminals using touchscreen technology. The use of touchscreen technology for user input into computer systems provides a system which is user friendly to customers. One reason for this acceptance is that each screen in the application running on the system can be provided with just the number of keys and options needed by the user at that time for a particular transaction. Other keys and functions which are not needed do not appear on the screen, thereby eliminating potential confusion and inconveniences to the user of the terminal. If there is a need for the user or customer to input text into the system, such as a name or address, a full screen keyboard can be displayed on the touchscreen for the customer to enter the required information. This full screen keyboard can appear similar to a physical computer keyboard with which a typical user would have some familiarity. Such systems are self-functioning normally and do not require an operator in regular attendance.
Touchscreen technology is well known and terminals implementing such technology are available from various manufacturers. Examples of such terminals include IBM 5990 Consumer Transaction Machine, Interbold 1055 Interactive Marketing Terminal and NCR 5682 Self Service Terminal.
Consumer interface touchscreen systems exist today and are often implemented for user input in the English language as well as other single byte character languages such as French, Italian and Spanish. An example of such a system is the Service Ontario Kiosks which allow customers to obtain government services and products seven days a week with extended hours of operation. These kiosks have been designed and supplied by IBM Canada Ltd. to the Government of Ontario and are located at major shopping centres throughout Ontario. These kiosks function like sophisticated automated bank machines and allow the public to conveniently receive services including purchase a vehicle license sticker, purchase a driver/vehicle or carrier abstract, order a personalized or graphic vehicle license plate, purchase a used vehicle information package, pay fines to the Ministry of the Attorney General resulting from vehicular infractions, pay parking tickets in certain major cities, and change an address for such things as Ontario Health Card, Ontario driver's license, and Ontario vehicle registration. Similar self service systems providing the same or similar services exist in many other jurisdictions and geographies.
A key component to the operation and functioning of the aforementioned Service Ontario Kiosks is the IBM.RTM. Consumer Device Services which is a computer program intended primarily for use in multimedia self-service kiosk environments. A specific example of the IBM Consumer Device Services (CDS) product is the IBM Consumer Device Services for OS/2.RTM. which is a licensed program for operation on all Intel.RTM. architecture personal computer systems that support OS/2 and available from IBM. Further discussion and more details of the CDS product are contained in the subsequent description provided in this application with respect to a preferred embodiment of the subject invention.
For multi-byte character language inputs from a physical keyboard into a computer system, the operating system performs the handling of multiple keystrokes per character on behalf of an application program running on the computer system. The module of the operating system which performs this task is referred to as an input method editor (IME). Input method editors are also referred to as front end processors as the editor immediately manipulates the entered information to display the desired text on the screen. The IME module, or applet, of the operating system, allows the user to enter the thousands of different characters used in Far Eastern written languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean, using a standard 101-key keyboard. IMEs can be used when text is entered that doesn't involve typing each character directly and are widely used in operating systems for entering ideographs and other characters phonetically, or component by component, into computer systems. The user composes each character in one of several ways, including by radical, that is, a group of strokes in a character that are treated as a unit for the purpose of sorting, indexing and classification, by phonetic representation or by typing in the numeric codepage index of the characters, which is a standard index for characters of all national languages, promulgated by the International Standard Organization. IMEs are widely available and Windows.RTM. and OS/2 operating systems include an IME module with the operating system that handles physical keyboard inputs.
An IME consists of an engine that converts input keystrokes into phonetic and ideographic characters to be displayed, plus a dictionary of commonly used ideographic words. As the user enters keystrokes, the IME engine functions by attempting to guess which ideographic character or characters the keystrokes should be converted into. Since many ideographs have identical pronunciation, the first guess of the IME engine may not always be correct and the user may then be provided an opportunity to choose from a list of homophones. The homophone that the user selects then becomes the IME engine's first guess for that ideograph the next time around.
Further details and understanding of IMEs may be obtained from the reference "Developing International Software for Windows 95 and Windows NT", copyright 1995 by Nadine Kano.
Although inputs of multi-byte characters from physical keyboards are handled by computer operating systems having input method editors, prior to the present invention, no such capability existed for handling multi-byte character inputs entered from touchscreen keyboards. Touchscreen keyboards only presently exist for handling single byte characters such as inputs in the English language. With multi-byte character languages such as Chinese, Korean and Japanese, a problem arises in trying to implement the touchscreen keyboard in presently available computer operating systems. A single touch of a touchscreen keyboard can no longer represent a full character. Multiple symbols or entries are needed to be inputted in order to form a single character. No solution or support presently exists in popular operating systems such as OS/2, Windows 95 or Windows NT to allow for touchscreen keyboard input for multi-byte character languages.
An indication of existing prior art is provided by Robert A. Rose in U.S. Pat. No. 5,623,261 entitled "Method and System for Translating Keyed Input Within a Data Processing System". This patent issued Apr. 22, 1997 and is assigned to International Business Machines Corporation. This reference provides for the processing of data input resulting from the selection of keys on a computer input device. A method and system is disclosed which provides for the converting of keyboard keystrokes into character and function input codes for processing and, more particularly, for translating keyboard scan codes into function and character input codes which may be utilized by data processing systems having diverse operating systems and keyboard hardware. Although various national languages and use of touchscreens as input devices are alluded to in this reference, the problem of handling multi-byte character language inputs by means of a touchscreen is not addressed.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide improvements in data processing systems for the handling of inputs from touchscreens.
It is another object of the present invention to provide for the handling of multi-byte character languages entered into a computer system by a touchscreen keyboard.
It is another object of the invention to provide for the handling of multiple multi-byte character languages entered into computer systems using touchscreen keyboards.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide for self-service terminals which include touchscreens for entering into a computer system text and information consisting of multi-byte characters or multiple multi-byte characters of human languages as well as single byte character languages.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a method for the processing and displaying of multi-byte characters on a display of a touchscreen keyboard.